But this year, for a change, when everything comes crashing down sometime between late Thursday and mid-afternoon Friday on the first weekend of the NCAA tournament, I want to reasonably say: It was the system. It wasn’t me.

I’m going to crumple the sheet by Sunday anyway.

This year, I’m tracking a handful of methods to see whether they hold the key to bracket mysteries. I threw out RPI, forgot about points per game and skipped the reputation of coaches. The Final Fours, admittedly, aren’t so hot. But are these brackets any worse by following formulas that allow no mind or heart? (Yeah, I cringed and thought about ways to cheat each time I moved Florida Gulf Coast to the next line. But here goes.)

Alphabetical order: Like kids who sit at the front of the class at the start of the year just because they are an Adam or an Arthur, a Final Four generated by alphabetical winners from the start of the bracket isn’t based on merit. CBS is moaning at this final weekend — likely the weakest of all these methods: Albany over Arizona, and Akron over Bucknell. Champ: Akron. (Had it been alphabetical by mascots, the Zips would have been gone in the first round.)

Sorting Z-to-A for school name doesn’t do much better: Wisconsin over Valparaiso, and Western Kentucky over Temple. Champ: Wisconsin.

Directional schools: Latitude and longitude are beautiful things, defining who we are — not to mention where we are — as much as anything. As bracket diviners, latitude and longitude aren’t getting quoted in First Four In and First Four Out in next year’s ESPN rankings. Here’s how the tournament shakes out when giving wins to teams who are farthest ...

Close to home: The world doesn’t revolve around me — though, I’m willing to make that case — but this bracket does. The premium goes to the Midwest and Indiana with picks based on schools closest to my desk in Lafayette. Final Four: Valparaiso (98 miles) over Notre Dame (154 miles), and Butler (59 miles) over Michigan (239 miles). Champ: Butler.

Big Ten over all: This one goes out to Charles Barkley, who had no love for the national infatuation with the conference’s strength. How did he put it during the tournament selections on Sunday? “You get a bunch of ugly girls together and pick a homecoming queen, that don’t mean she’s the homecoming queen.” OK.

But here’s a bracket Dan Dakich would drool over. I took Big Ten teams all the way, going with the higher seeded team to win whenever they met head-to-head. The other games went to the highest seeded team. (I also did one that gave the non-Big Ten games based on alphabetical order of the school names.)

The Final Four: Ohio State over Michigan State, and Indiana over Michigan. Champ: IU.

Give it to the kid: If I had to give you a gauge of our 12-year-old’s level of enthusiasm for following college basketball — or any sport, for that matter — I’d replay the exchange at the dinner table when Carol and I figured that there weren’t any sports really worth watching that night. “No games?” Olivia asked. “Touchdown for me!”

Still, this is the girl who had Butler winning it all the two years the Bulldogs went to the championship game. (The first year because she picked dog mascots to make deep runs; the second year because she was enamored by that Butler magic.) We all could do worse. Her bracket this year has some sentimental, mascot-friendly choices — Butler to the Sweet 16 — but her picks had a lot more chalk than ever before, with top-seeded teams doing best. (That, and she had a mean streak about Bucknell, who we saw beat Purdue in the season opener at Mackey Arena.)

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She turned in this Final Four with a promise: “This one’s worth some money.” Ohio State over Duke, and Indiana over Kansas. Champ: Ohio State.

Mascots: With your mouth, you say you hate the people in the office who pick based on the coolest mascot. (“A Billiken? That’s Final Four cute!”) In your heart, you wish you had a mascot system that worked: The toughest ones over weaker ones; cats over everything; anything but Tigers. You know what I’m talking about. (For the best set of rules about a mascot bracket, check out insidehook.com. You’ll thank me later. First rule: “Color beats dogs. Dogs have difficulty seeing color. This is just science.”)

Short of that, I settled for metrics: How long is the mascot name? This put a premium on schools that lumped colors in with names or tossed “Runnin’” or “Fighting” in there. The toughest regional? Definitely the East, where even the Golden Bears (Cal) couldn’t get out of the first round against the Runnin’ Rebels (UNLV).

Tradition, as in age: In the NCAA, there are traditional powers. And then there’s tradition stamped on a school’s founding date. Based on the age of the university, here’s your Final Four: Georgetown over Indiana, Harvard over Louisville. Champion: Harvard.

And the Five-Minute Method: Otherwise known as how I do it every year. This year’s bound-for-crumpling Final Four: Louisville over New Mexico, and Kansas over Miami. Champs: Kansas.